Life – Page 2 – The No Format Blog

What about Breakfast?

I’ve seen plenty of things said about breakfast; the most popular is that it’s “the most important meal of the day“. In my experience, this is simply not true. I rarely eat breakfast, and I don’t suffer for it. Unfortunately, I do not have empirical evidence; I can’t tell you whether I’ve been negatively affected by it (are my insides rotting because I’m not eating breakfast?), and I also can’t tell you that my positive weight loss results can be directly attributed to not eating breakfast (it’s not – it’s tied to my calorie deficit that I try my best to maintain).

https://www.flickr.com/photos/vauvau/11855393546

Not a typical breakfast for me. Photo credit:
Clemens v. Vogelsang

I thought I would do a bit of research for this instead. I performed two different searches:

“Is breakfast really necessary?”
“Why should you eat breakfast?”

I wanted to word each search to try to get a tailored result; with the first search term, I expected to see articles that either support skipping breakfast or at least tell you that it’s a personal decision about whether or not you need to eat breakfast.

The second I purposefully worded it “pro” breakfast, to see if I would get something that supported the idea of eating breakfast. I was also curious with this search term to see if the articles I got were backed by anyone with an agenda (i.e. food companies). So here’s what I found out.

Is breakfast really necessary?

I found this article from the BBC: “Is breakfast really the most important meal of the day?” Go ahead and read it, I’ll wait.

One of the very first things I noticed is that this article tries very hard to remain neutral, and even links to some interesting stuff about the food industry pushing studies that support eating breakfast. The most interesting thing I took out of the article was this section about trying to determine a relationship between breakfast and obesity:

What they found was that it wasn’t breakfast itself that caused the participants to lose weight: it was changing their normal routine. The women who said before the study that they usually ate breakfast lost 8.9kg when they stopped having breakfast, compared to 6.2kg in the breakfast group. Meanwhile, those who usually skipped breakfast lost 7.7kg when they started eating it – and 6kg when they continued to skip it.
Jessica Brown – Nov 28 2018

And, of course, this line here:

A 2016 review of 10 studies looking into the relationship between breakfast and weight management concluded there is “limited evidence” supporting or refuting the argument that breakfast influences weight or food intake, and more evidence is required before breakfast recommendations can be used to help prevent obesity.

Jessica Brown – Nov 28 2018

The entire article goes back and forth between whether or not breakfast is good or bad. One study says yes, another says no. One scientist says simply “don’t have a late dinner if you skip breakfast”. It goes on.

The final conclusion seems to be: nobody agrees, so just pay attention to your body (in other words, eat when you’re hungry). OK, let me circle back to this after the next section.

Why should you eat breakfast?

The very first search result was definitely pro-Breakfast: “5 Reasons Why You Should Eat Breakfast“. Again, I’ll be here.

Once again, first impressions: what the search result doesn’t tell you is that this is a sponsored post. From the article: “This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of belVita for IZEA. All opinions are 100% mine.” OK, so immediately I know that this is supported by the food industry; but perhaps there’s more substance here.

Breakfast is a must for all of us. It is the most important meal of the day. A nutritious breakfast is very important for our health and weight management, but not having it at all is the worst option. 5 Reasons why you should eat breakfast: burns fat, keeps blood sugar even through the day, helps to fight daytime cravings, lower incident of heart disease, keeps our brains sharp, helps with concentration and productivity.
Amy, A Healthy Life For Me

This is the opening paragraph. It goes on, but I’ll reflect a bit here. First, there are no indications that there’s any sourcing for these claims. The author just states them as fact. I just finished reading in the BBC article that many of these reasons provided are contentious and studies both prove and disprove them. I’m a little disappointed in the effort here.

But the article does go on, as I said; it provides some basic information about protein and fiber – still not sourcing anything – and repeats the 5 basic reasons from the opening paragraph.

In general this article is not very helpful and even though it is sponsored content, I think more care should have been given to find sources for the information given.

So, what about breakfast?

As I mentioned at the start of this post, and found out from the BBC article, it ultimately depends on your own body and your needs. But what I think you should pull from this article is more about how careful you should be when searching for answers about something.

The positive or negative spin you put on a search term will definitely influence your results, and you need to be careful about what you’re reading. There are a lot more sponsored content pieces out there these days, so it can be difficult to determine what’s fact and what’s not.

Either way, this was a fun little exercise that supported my own personal viewpoint.

How I Learned to Stop Drinking Pop and Love Flavoured Soda Water

When I was younger I used to drink regular pop all the time – usually Coca Cola. I long since switched to diet pop and never looked back.

But recently on a whim I decided to try President’s Choice Blue Menu sparkling water. It was 89 cents for a tall bottle, so I figured I would give it a try. I’ve never been a fan of soda water – for some reason, I just find the carbonation negatively affects the taste.

But this PC sparkling water was flavoured – watermelon, to be specific. Probably not the first flavour I’d normally choose, but I thought I’d give it a try; the flavour really helped. At first, it took me a bit to get used to. The carbonation was still a bit overpowering, but after getting through the bottle, I enjoyed it.

From the watermelon flavour, I branched out to a few different ones. They have lime, lemon, orange – quite a range. I liked them all. So far from the PC line of sparkling water my favourite of theirs is the Blueberry Pomegranate. You can smell the blueberry flavour as soon as you open the can, and it tastes really good.

I find that I drink the sparkling water a lot slower than pop; I think the carbonation is a a bit harsher than traditional soft drinks. I did some very brief research (read: one google search and glance over a wikipedia article) but I can’t find anything that seems to substantiate this. Whatever the case is, I find that I enjoy these drinks more because they take longer to drink, and it’s a good thing that they last longer. Sometimes it kind of just sucks when you run out of a nice drink too soon.

Since discovering my affinity for flavoured sparkling water I’ve branched out a bit and tried some different flavours. Perrier has a really great-tasting strawberry flavour, and I recently tried a Montellier lemon-flavoured drink. I’m happy to stick with the store brand because it’s much cheaper than these “premium” brands of drinks.

I highly recommend switching the flavoured sparkling water, if soda/pop/soft drinks are an issue for you. Nothing beats regular water, but when you want something different – these fit the bill.

Motivation

Last night I was washing the dishes. Not in order to feel good about myself – no, sometimes I need to clean to ward off negative energy instead.

Last night I was feeling ready to blow up at my dog, who was driving me a little batty. Instead, I attacked the dishes. As it tends to happen, I had a few thoughts pop in my head.

Lately I’ve wanted to get back into fiction writing. Just small stuff, short stories (probably flash fiction at that) – nothing lengthy. I’ve been doing some reading to brush up on my skills/habits; not other fiction right now but namely prompts, idea sources, etc.

Writing short fiction is easy – it doesn’t take long to write a story. Writing a good piece of short fiction is levels more difficult of course, but that’s not the issue I need to tackle at the moment.

The problem I’m having is one of motivation, and that’s the thought/realization that I had last night while I was doing the dishes. It’s something that I want to figure out how to fix but I’m not sure how to do it just yet.

Motivation in some fields of my life isn’t hard to come by. I can find the motivation to go to work, to put podcast stuff together, to work out, to eat right; but to write? It’s missing.

And I don’t understand why. I have a memory of maybe 6-7 years back at Christmas when I would write short stories in a notebook. Where has that inspiration gone?

I’d like to find it. I’ll see what I can do.

I feel good.

I just came back from a walk (at the time of writing – 12:45pm today). It’s cold – my weather app says it’s -8, but with the wind it feels like -16. I think it’s colder than that. I was bundled up – good jacket, warm hat, new gloves – so I really only felt the cold on my face.

I walked to the local Tim Horton’s, about 10-15 minutes up the road on foot. I picked up an XL dark roast coffee, and a lone Old Fashion Plain timbit. I was going to go with a full doughnut, because I honestly forgot that I could get individual timbits. These ones are 50 calories each – a much better option than 210 calories from a full doughnut.

I kept it in my pocket the entire walk back to the office. It tasted so good. Yeah, a full doughnut might have been nice, but I think I would have wasted 160 calories. I’ll take the feeling of enjoying a great tasting, tiny doughnut combined with a brisk walk over the extra 160 calories.

Starting Over (Again)

I recently took a look at my weight numbers and came to the realization that since August 2014, I have gained at least 40 pounds. This, after having lost about that same amount in a period of 15 months from 2013 to 2014.

That kind of number should be shocking, and it is. But I’m not reacting negatively to it. Instead I’m using the shock as a motivator. For the last year+ I’ve been trying to lose weight, but haven’t really been getting anywhere (and in fact, have gained weight – just look at the chart for the last year!). Seeing that I’ve gained so much weight back is an eye opener.

Clearly, I’m not “doing it right”. If I’m being honest, I know also I haven’t been recording my calorie intake (using MyFitnessPal) properly – at least, until last week. If I were to think about any change I could possibly make, this is the first place to start.

Sure, even in the last week, I still have had a couple of days where I was lazy and didn’t log things properly. But what’s important to me here is that these days are 1 or 2 in 10, rather than 7 or 8 in 10. So I have started here, with logging.

Looking back before my hard restart, I can see that I just gave up completely on days where I know I blew my calorie goal. I’d stop logging and not worry about it. This is where I went wrong. Today, I’ll keep logging the calories even if I’m going over my daily budget. It’s the only way I’ll keep accountable.

It really boils down to accountability. For the longest time, I’ve been entering all of this fitness data and not doing anything with it. Not only am I fixing what was broken, I’m going to have to do a regular review of my progress. I won’t do that here, but this blog post is basically just as much for people reading it as it is for me to say, “I have to do this.”

And I will do this. I did it before. My first goal post is 20 pounds by March 5, 2019. I’ve only been at this in full force for about a week, and I’m at about the same weight as when I started. I’m going to do a meaningful review next week (at the two week mark) and see where I am.

Simple Changes Make a Big Difference

This probably seems like a very obvious revelation, but recently I’ve discovered how great it makes me feel to work with a clean kitchen.

Let me explain a bit further. It’s not like I never cleaned the kitchen before, or never appreciated a clean kitchen, it’s just that up until this past weekend I was very lazy (or maybe more appropriately, lackadaisical) after cooking dinner. We have only one sink, plus a dishwasher, but with that set up it’s a pain to keep the dishes clean. So then I decide I’ll do it later, and then everything just keeps piling up.

This weekend I did a major clean of the kitchen after cooking dinner for the family. It made the next morning amazingly easy for making breakfast, and then the dishes piled up a bit more after dinner. But then I cleaned it all up before going to bed. The next morning, making lunches was even easier. Everything was where I needed it to be, and ready to use. So I kept the chain going, and cleaned up after last night’s dinner, too.

The side effect wasn’t just the useful, clean kitchen. That I feel is the bonus in this situation. I’ve noticed a significant positive impact on my mood, too. Now, I think this is a large part of my personality. I like it when things are clean and orderly, and it bugs me when I start to see the kitchen dirty with dishes piled up waiting to be washed.

While this is a simple habit I’m hopefully going to stick with, it’s something that makes me happier just a little bit in my life. This is one room I have locked down (so far). Next thing I need to tackle is the basement. But I hope this little write-up helps someone pick out something in their own life they can change to make a bigger difference.

Self Reflection with the help of Podcasts

I listened to three podcast episodes recently that I thought were really good at sparking a line of thought for self reflection and/or improvement. Two of them were from the same podcast, the third was a different one.

Overthinking It – Episode 531 – You Are Not Worse Than You Are and Episode 532 – The Dragon Bookmark.

Normally Overthinking it spends time picking apart popular culture, but for the weeks of September 3rd and 10th they didn’t deem popular culture worthy of being picked apart. Episode 531 was all about self improvement, and the ideas inherent to those words themselves and other ways people go about trying to improve themselves. 532 was something else entirely – it was about the experience of being alone with your thoughts (to put it briefly).

I really wish I wrote down what prompted me to start this post at the time that the thoughts came, but suffice it to say that I was very much engrossed in these episodes and figure that other people can get something out of them as well. Even if you’re not focused on self improvement at the moment, it doesn’t hurt to engage in some self reflection.

The Hilarious World of Depression – Imposter Syndrome: True Tales, Tricks, and Tactics for When You’re Feeling Fraudulent. I get this a lot – I feel like my efforts aren’t good enough at all when it comes to making things. And it doesn’t even have to be in the creative realm – that was a revelation I heard while listening to this podcast. Often times I believe myself to be less than what I am in other people’s presence.

I remember being busy cooking while I was listening to this episode, so I might need to listen to it again when I’m less focused on another task. But sometimes it is helpful just to hear that other people struggle in the same way that you do, so that’s the primary use behind this episode for me.

Bonus Podcast: I forgot about this one when I started working on this post. Raise the Bar – Season 2 Episode 2 – One Kwe. This was basically a long interview with the owner of One Kwe, Kathryn Corbiere. She’s in the process of opening her own storefront soon on Manitoulin, and has had her work featured in many different places (most prominently, Manitoulin Brewing Company). It was very refreshing & inspiring to hear her story.

Some Observations of My Organizational Habits

Last week there was a bit of a kerfuffle on the /r/bujo subreddit – basically that subreddit was created to embrace minimalism in bullet journalling, to counter-act the extremely popular “artsy” entries that people are sharing these days. The issue was that the art crowd was filtering into /r/bujo (probably because they picked the wrong subreddit) and the spirit of minimalism was dying; so the minimalists fought back and are in the process of reclaiming the subreddit.

Did you follow all of that? Good. Where I connect to this is that I tend to be minimalist; I don’t sketch or doodle or use stickers (I used to use multiple pen colours, but I don’t like carting around multiple pens), I stick to the basics.

I keep a separate book for personal stuff as well as at work. What I’m noticing in my habits lately is interesting, though! I use my work planner daily – it basically is a very large, multi-functional to-do list with pages for notes from meetings. I use it in combination with digital tools (Outlook, OneNote, basically all of Microsoft Office). It works for me and is helpful for tracking my progress.

For my personal stuff, I sometimes go days without opening up the book (I haven’t looked at it today, actually). I’m feeling more and more inclined to stick with my digital tools for my personal life and ditch the bullet journal aspect. I don’t get quite the same satisfaction of using it as I used to. Conversely I am finding more uses from my existing digital tools.

For example, I have both Samsung Notes & Microsoft’s OneNote at my fingertips – my smart phone has both of these within a few taps if I need to write anything down. I put nearly everything in Google Calendar. I’ve started playing around with Microsoft’s To-Do app as well. This works for me.

I went into this post thinking that the end result I’d come out with is that I’m going to just keep my notebooks for work and go 100% digital for my home life. But I wonder now if taking the time to sit down and plan out my day holds a benefit that I’m forgetting about. Is it a way for me to slow down?

Maybe. I think there’s also nothing wrong with sitting down and planning things out digitally. When it comes down to it, I’ve been avoiding the “sitting down” part of the equation entirely. I think this is something I need to explore a little bit more again. There’s nothing stopping me from reviewing things electronically and keeping my life…well, digital.

Perhaps my habits will change, but this is what I’ve picked up on so far. They’ve changed since I got back into notebooks on a daily basis three years ago, so there’s no reason they can’t continue to evolve.

What’s your choice? Digital or Analogue? Or both?

Health Notes + Quick Dailyio Review

I’ve not seen very much progress in the weight loss department over the last 90 days. My numbers have pretty much fluctuated up and down, meaning I’m more or less maintaining my weight rather than losing. That’s fine, it’s definitely better than gaining.

I know the reason for this too – I’ve not been properly tracking my calorie intake via MyFitnessPal. It’s been a combination of a number of things – either I skip days entirely, or I only enter a portion of my diary, or I don’t record “treats” – the bottom line is that I’m not keeping track of what I’m eating, so I’m not holding myself accountable to the weight loss.

In looking at my numbers, I think part of the reason for this is because I set my daily food goal too low. It looks like I based it on losing 2 pounds a week – which is pretty aggressive, but it meant that daily I was only allowed 1690 calories. That’s really low. I asked some questions yesterday about what I was doing, and the person responding felt my calorie deficit was really high. That’s when I looked at my numbers and agreed with them. Helps to get outside perspective every now and then. So I’ve done a reset, based my numbers on my TDEE – 500 per day (so the goal is: 1 lb per week).

We’ll see how this goes. I’ve also decided not to focus too much on the exercise front; I will be going to the gym, going for walks, playing some sports, etc. But I feel that I’m putting too much emphasis on getting my daily steps in and I’m not getting as much reading done as I’d like to.

Edit: My overall goal too is to help me feel more comfortable with the clothes I’ve bought. I liked them in the store, but when I go to put them on at home for work, I don’t like the way they look. So there’s a confidence thing going on too.

Daylio

I’ve recently started using the Daylio app. I’m…not at all sure how they came up with that name, but it serves a specific purpose that I was looking for. Namely, to track how I’m feeling. Mostly I wanted to do this for days when I feel “down”, to try and figure out the reason behind feeling that way.

I wanted something simple, quick, and give me the option to look back on it later to track trends. I stumbled upon Daylio quite by accident, because I was originally thinking of tracking this kind of thing in my bullet journal. I saw someone recommend Daylio and it turned out to be exactly what I needed.

I stuck with the free version for a while, but they ended up having a 50% off sale – so I jumped on it and bought the paid version of the app. To be honest, I think most people will be fine with the free version – I probably would still be using it for free had there not been a flash sale.

But the app is pretty basic. You open it up, add an entry (which is done by clicking on an overall mood and associating with an activity), and that’s it. You can type notes if you want to, but it’s completely optional. The simplicity of the app is what makes it great. I believe the paid version opens it up to add more “moods”.

Overall it’s only something I recommend if you need a quick tracking app. It’s not an in-depth thing that has a lot of utility. I would say that if you need help with mental health in a serious capacity, this is not a solution.

Notebook Habit

I’ve got what I consider to be a “weird” hobby (or habit?) – writing in notebooks. I consider it weird, because I have no practical use for notebooks – other than my “bullet journal” set up, I don’t really write down anything of substance day-to-day. And yet, it’s an extremely enjoyable thing to see my personal font jump out just right from the page.

OK, the picture I just included is a little on the messy side. But what I hope it illustrates is just the right balance of colour and shape of the letters that seems to look…”right” on the page. This is the part where I consider my hobby / habit weird. I don’t spend as much time writing things out as I used to, but finding the perfect paper and perfect pen (or sometimes pencil) for that paper is fantastic.

Every now and then (and now is one of those times) I go on a little quest to figure out, “what can I use my varied selection of notebooks for?” The question is often unanswered, because either I give up or the feeling just fades away before I get a chance. Predominantly I use it for planning my day or writing things down I don’t want to forget. But that is purely functional – I actually want to write something out rather than use a planner.

So my search has started. At the absolute least I will probably start writing out my blog posts by hand before typing them out here. Ultimately, I would very much like to use up the notebooks that I’ve spent good money on 😉